by Richard B. Muhammad
NNPA News Service

The second in a series of stories generated by an African-American media delegation during a recent, fact-gathering tour of earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

PORT-au-PRINCE, Haiti – With a major earthquake a little more than a month behind them, some 230,000 dead, hundreds of thousands displaced and many still struggling to find food and water, Haitians need help, but aren’t waiting around for anyone to come to the rescue.

“From day one the first people that responded to the cry of help was Haitians themselves, getting people out of the rubble. People have this will to survive and get the country back on track,” said Alex Georges, a Haitian businessman and tour operator.

Haitians pick through rubble of a building in downtown Port-au-Prince. (Photo by Hazel Trice Edney/NNPA)

“We were going on the right path, so it was big blow, but we have to stay strong and get back on track, and you can feel that at every refugee or I would say victim camp. The people have the will and the desire to survive and they are not just waiting for help. They are trying to do whatever they can to survive in a positive way,” said Georges, who also works as a translator.

He helped Haitian Boy Scouts set up tents at a camp for those whose homes were destroyed or whose houses are too dangerous to live near. Others may not have had homes at all, but the tent city not far from the once-gleaming National Palace teems with activity. Children play, families sit together – one group of young men even competed on an improvised basketball court.

Life, it seems, must go on.

Jean-Baptiste Jemmi was lucky enough for his home to survive the earthquake. The place where he worked was destroyed. Undeterred, the 26 year old is running a mobile cell phone charging station and mobile Internet café from the back of a truck with a canopy overhead. For a few gourds, Haitian currency, people can access email, update Facebook pages, get information, connect with the outside world and recharge cell phones.

“It’s important for people to communicate with their relatives that are abroad, check their email and communicate with family members,” said Jean-Baptiste. Such contact can be a literal lifeline with so many Haitians dependent on relatives for money to survive.

A drive from the outskirts of the city to its center bypassed lines of women collecting food, trucks filled with items, markets packed with produce and goods and even crews repaving a road. It takes money, of course, to buy cell phones and cabbage or candles and shoes. Money is still scarce for many in this already poor country.

The lucky ones are back to work or are making a way for themselves on the streets, usually while sleeping on the streets. Thousands still line up at 16 emergency food sites run by the U.S. Agency for International Development and others managed by the many non-profits operating in the city.

Life is still hard, but the determination to live is fierce. Haitians remain unbowed as many face realities that could easily reduce grown men to tears.

As a Black Press delegation toured Port-Au-Prince Feb. 9-12, the destruction was apparent and massive.

Patrick Delatour, the Howard University-educated minister of tourism who is heading the Office of National Reconstruction, said the people are busy, but a collective plan is needed and in the works. He lost his parents in the disaster.

From a building where the toilet doesn’t flush, Delatour huddles with architects, plots the new vision and tries to carry out the wishes of President René Preval.

Port-Au-Prince will remain the capital as called for in the constitution, but the city will be smaller and more services and housing will be spread out, Delatour explained, pointing to a map.

He bristled at charges of corruption, saying it is a pretty bad thief that steals from government, but remains in poverty.

The Préval government, he said, has ceded delivery of food, tents, medicine, clothing and other items to aid groups, charities and international groups helping out in the country because the government doesn’t have the capacity to handle distribution and delivery.

The Jan. 12 quake killed several lawmakers, government ministers and personnel, policemen and those who do the daily work of administration. A bus ride around the city is a showcase for destroyed ministries – everything from the presidential palace, which is also the work space for the president, to the internal revenue service with tax and property records ruined. The parliament building caved in.

Citing his country’s history, Delatour stressed moving forward. Help from the international community is needed, but projects in the pipeline after three years work need to continue, he said. Aid money should be for new projects.

 “We have got to stay strongly engaged in the process in aiding and assisting Haiti over the next several months and even years to bounce back and to be built stronger and better,” said Dr. Ron Daniels, founder of the Haiti Support Project and organizer of the journalists’ fact-finding mission. He has been working in Haiti for 15 years.

“Certainly this earthquake was an equal opportunity devastator and to rebuild Haiti it has to be all hands on deck,” said Daniels.

Haitian institutions, whether the damaged State University Hospital or makeshift aid stations, provide services for people. People also care for one another as best they can.

Dr. Alex Lasseque, executive director of the State Hospital, which had tents on parking lots that served as triage centers, patient wards, laboratories and staff housing, said the emergency situation and crush injuries have largely been dealt with.

His current waves of patients standing quietly or sitting in long lines are largely coming in with pre-quake illness, such as diabetes or asthma, or for follow ups to treatment or handling things like infections.

Lasseque said a team is set up to help staff and patients deal with the psychological trauma of their experiences, and a national commission has the psychological impact of the quake as a major item to deal with.

(Special to the NNPA from the Final Call.)